Every time I speak in front of a group of women, I’m taken by the beautiful diversity of their individual selves. Of course, there’s the hypnotic variety of skin tones, facial features and hair colors and textures, that testify to the infinite garden of racial, ethnic and cultural diversity that flavors the human condition. But there’s also, invariably, a breath-taking array of body sizes, and I’m always so pleased to see those women who wear their sizes, the largest to the smallest, with love and pride.
No matter our size, there’s a vital case to be made for
maintaining a “healthful” body weight, whatever that might be, based upon a
variety of factors like age, height, individual and family history and so on. And
certainly, maintaining a healthy relationship with one’s "numbers" including those associated with blood pressure and
blood glucose levels, both of which are tied to size and weight, can be absolutely
essential to staying alive.
But as far as sheer appearance and sense of self are
concerned, like so many of women in the US and elsewhere, I’ve scuffled with
this weight thing for as long as I can remember, sometimes impatient with my family’s
tendency towards being “pleasingly plump” as my beautiful and pleasingly plump Nana
used to say.
But especially now, when January 1st’s resolutions
to trim it all down have begun their inevitable wane, a smart young woman who’s
close to my heart thought a post about sex and size - not penis size, mind you
- might just be in order.